Pete,
I have 4 Hungarian oak barrels from Vadai and couldn't be happier with them. The following has been taken from several Barrel and oak products manufacturers, who can explain it better than them..lol
Heavy Toast brings pronounced caramelized, carbonized and toast flavors very quickly.
Medium Plus Toast Is between Medium and Heavy Toast. It has aromas of honey, roasted nuts and a hint of coffee and spices.
Medium Toast has less tannins but more bouquet, so will impart more aroma than flavor. It has a warm, sweet character with strong vanilla overtones.
Light Toast fresh oak, coconut and fruit flavors.
From Morewine:
French Oak Flavor Summary
All toast levels have a perceived aromatic sweetness and full mouthfeel.
French oak has a fruity, cinnamon/allspice character, along with custard/ crème brûlée, milk chocolate and campfire/roasted coffee notes*. (*Especially at higher toast levels.)
As the toast levels increased the fruity descriptor for the wine changed from fresh to jammy to cooked fruit/raisin in character.
American Oak Flavor Summary
The American oak had aromatic sweetness and a campfire/ roasted coffee attribute present in all three toast levels, with Medium Plus and Heavy toast having the highest intensity.
American oak had cooked fruit more than a fresh or
jammy quality.
American Oak imparted mouthfeel/fullness, especially in Medium Plus.
Hungarian Oak Flavor Summary
The Hungarian oak at Medium toast displayed a high perceived-vanillin content, with roasted coffee, bitter sweet chocolate and black pepper characters.
Medium Plus and Heavy toast imparted mouthfeel fullness, with only a slight amount of campfire/roasted coffee. Heavy also had pronounced vanillin. At all toast levels, there were unique attributes such as leather and black pepper, not observed in other oak origins.
That said, I prefer the Hungarian oak, for me, it is a better quality oak than the American oak, and obviously more affordable than the french oak.
In my Cab, I added 1 Medium heavy oak infusion spiral during fermentation which gave it an amazing level of complexity, and I plan on putting it through a medium toast Hungarian barrel (Vadai) for at least 6 month or more, Cab can take a good deal of oak.
I have 2, 5 gallon and 2, 6 gallon barrels, I plan on purchasing a 10 or 13 gallon barrel in the near future.
I hope that this helps.
Tom
